Odds & Ends

The Austrian Times reports that a teenage student in Kazakhstan has been expelled from high school after being caught with a 35-foot long cheat sheet wrapped around his body. The student was allegedly taking university entrance tests when examiners noticed him reaching inside his clothing. Under his shirt, they found a ream of computer printouts containing 25,000 potential answers to the exam’s questions. “If he’d put half as much effort into studying as he did into cheating, he would have sailed through the exam with a distinction,” education authority spokesperson Bolatzhan Uskenbayev was quoted as saying. “It’s a pity to see all that work come to nothing. But he cheated, and that’s not allowed.”

Dateline: Austria

Perhaps love isn’t eternal after all. Zoo officials in Klagenfurt say a giant tortoise couple who have been together for 115 years are evidently on the outs. Tortoises Bibi and Poldi grew up together and have been “married” ever since they moved together from the Basel zoo in Switzerland 36 years ago. But now, “We get the feeling they can’t stand the sight of each other anymore,” director Helga Happ of Reptilienzoo Happ told the Austrian Times. “For no reason we can discover, they seem to have fallen out.” Staff at the reptile park realized there was trouble in paradise when the female, Bibi, took a bite out of her partner’s shell. Zoo staff has tried its best to interest the pair in mutual activities, but to no avail. Bibi in particular seems to want a cage to herself now. “We have staff talking to and trying to engage the two in interacting, and we hope that they might find their harmony again,” added Happ.

Dateline: Florida

Feel free to add your own puns to this story: A drunk man was arrested after trying to take his kitten into a strip club. The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office says it got a 911 call from Everett Lages, 47, of Port Charlotte saying he and his feline companion had been denied entrance to the Emerald City strip club in Murdock. Deputies arrived and found Lages sitting outside the business, refusing to leave. According to the sheriff’s office report, deputies who spoke with Lages “noted that he appeared to be intoxicated.” Deputies told Lages he needed to leave and helped him call a taxi cab. When the taxi arrived, Lages refused to provide his address. “Instead, Lages began yelling and causing a disturbance,” says a Charlotte County Sheriff's Office news release. “Lages insisted that the club owner had committed a crime and continued to call 911 on his cell phone, even though the deputies were on the scene.” Deputies told Lages he had to stop calling 911. He refused and was “placed under arrest and had to be forcibly restrained.” The animal-loving Lages was booked into jail on charges of misuse of the 911 system, disorderly intoxication, trespassing after warning and resisting arrest. According to the news release, the kitten was picked up by Animal Control and “is now safe and sound.”

Dateline: Montana

In what looked like a textbook example of irony, a West Virginia man hitchhiking across the country while writing a book about kindness reported he was shot by a stranger in a random act of violence. The shooting of Ray Dolan, 39, took place three miles west of the town of Glasgow, near Montana’s Bakken oil patch. Valley County Sheriff Glen Meier told the Billings Gazette that Dolan, “was sitting down to have a little lunch and this guy drives up. He thought he was going to give him a ride, and as he approached the vehicle, the guy pulls out his weapon and shoots him. It’s as simple as that.” Dolan was taken to Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital in Glasgow for treatment of a gunshot wound to the arm. A suspect, 52-year-old Lloyd Christopher Danielson III of Washington, was arrested about four hours later near Culbertson—some 100 miles from the scene of the shooting. No gun was found in Danielson’s pickup, however, and police began to grow suspicious. Combing the shooting scene along U.S. Highway 2, sheriff’s deputies located a Derringer pistol purchased by Dolin just days before the shooting. Shortly thereafter, Dolan admitted to shooting himself and fabricating the story of the pistol-packing stranger. Police believe Dolan did it to publicize the memoir he is writing, titled TheKindness of America.

Dateline: Nevada

Students at Spring Creek High School are having their diplomas reissued after it was discovered that the official documents misspelled the word “graduation.” According to the Elko Daily Free Press, the diplomas congratulated students on their “graduataion.” The school’s principal, Keith Walz, told the paper the spelling gaff was an “inadvertent mistake” and blamed the school’s supplier. The Salt Lake City-based Jostens company accepted blame, saying it had recently changed equipment and missed the error. Jostens has sent out corrected diplomas to the 203 Spring Creek High School affected.